By FATIMA HUSSEIN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump announced plans Tuesday to create a brand new agency called the External Revenue Service to gather tariffs and other revenue from foreign nations.

“We're going to start charging those who make money with us with trade and they're going to start paying,” Trump said on his social media site Truth Social on Tuesday. He compared his planned creation with that Internal financial servicethe country's domestic tax collector.

Creating a brand new agency requires an act from Congress, and Republicans hold majorities in each the House and Senate.

Trump, who has vowed to shrink the scale of presidency, would create a brand new agency to take over functions already carried out by existing agencies, including the Commerce Department and the U.S. Department of Government Customs and Border Protectioncollecting tariffs and revenue from other nations.

The president-elect has tapped two business titans to run his company Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGEa non-governmental task force tasked with finding ways forward Federal employees laid offCutting programs and eliminating federal regulations, all a part of what he calls his “Save America” agenda for a second term within the White House.

billionaire Elon Musk and co-entrepreneurs Vivek Ramaswamy are leading DOGE's ambitious efforts to cut back the scale and scope of the federal government.

Tariffs, with the specter of a possible 25% levy on all goods from allies resembling Canada and Mexico and 60% on goods from China, have develop into a benchmark of Trump's economic agenda as he begins his second term.

Economists have cited the fee of tariffs are passed on to consumersand are generally skeptical of them, seeing them as a mostly inefficient way for governments to boost money and promote prosperity.

Democratic lawmakers quickly criticized the External Revenue Service plan.

“No amount of silly rebranding will hide the fact that Trump is planning a multitrillion-dollar tax hike on American families and small businesses to fund another round of tax breaks to the rich,” the Oregon senator said. Ron Wydenthe highest Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee said in an announcement.

Originally published: January 14, 2025 at 11:06 am PST

When the Indian Health Service cannot provide medical care to Native Americans, the federal agency can refer them elsewhere. But every year it turns down tens of 1000’s of requests for funding for these treatments. Patients are forced to either forgo treatment or pay the horrendous medical bills out of their very own pockets.

Theoretically, Native Americans are Right to free health care when the Indian Health Service foots the bill for its facilities or sites managed by tribes. In reality, the agency chronically underfunded Medical care is proscribed and enormous parts of the country do not need easy accessibility to medical care.

The Purchase/Referred Care program is designed to fill gaps by paying outside providers for services that patients can't get at an agency-funded clinic or hospital, reminiscent of cancer treatment or prenatal care. But resource constraints, complicated regulations and administrative blunders make the referral program much harder to access, say patients, elected officials and other people who work with the agency.

The Indian Health Service, a part of the Department of Health and Human Services, serves roughly 2.6 million American Indians and Alaska Natives.

Native Americans qualify for the referral care program in the event that they continue to exist tribal land – only 13% — or inside the “Delivery area”, which usually includes surrounding counties. Those living in one other tribe’s delivery area are eligible in limited cases, while Native Americans living beyond those boundaries are excluded.

However, eligible patients don’t have any guarantee of monetary assistance or timely help. Some of the Indian Health Service's 170 service units have exhausted their annual pot of cash or are reserving it for essentially the most serious medical problems.

In fiscal yr 2022, referral programs denied or deferred nearly $552 million in spending for about 120,000 eligible patient claims.

This may cause Native Americans to forgo health care, increasing the danger of death or serious illness for individuals with preventable or treatable conditions.

The problem will not be latest. Federal regulators have reported concerns with this system for many years.

Connie Brushbreaker, a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, has been denied funding or placed on a waiting list at the very least 14 times since 2018. She says it is unnecessary that the agency sometimes refuses to pay for treatment that is just approved later when a health problem becomes more serious and expensive.

“We try to prevent it before it gets to the point where surgery is needed,” says Brushbreaker, who lives on her tribe’s reservation in South Dakota.

Many Native Americans imagine the U.S. government is violating its treaties with tribal nations, which regularly promised tribes would receive take care of their health and well-being in exchange for surrendering their land.

“My elders here keep telling me, 'There are treaty rights that say they can provide us with these services,'” said Lyle Rutherford, a council member of the Blackfeet Nation in northwest Montana who also said he worked for the Indian Health Service for 11 years.

Native Americans have a high rate of disease in comparison with the final population and their average age of death is 14 years younger than that of whites. Researchers who investigated the subject say many problems are the results of colonization and government policies, reminiscent of forcing Native people into residential schools and isolated reservations and abandoning healthy traditions reminiscent of bison hunting and non secular ceremonies. They also point to a persistent lack of health funding.

Congress has appropriated nearly $7 billion to the Indian Health Service this yr, with about $1 billion earmarked for the referral program. A committee of tribal health and government leaders has long made funding recommendations that far exceed the agency's budget. His latest report According to the Indian Health Service, $63 billion is required for fiscal yr 2026 to fulfill patient needs, including $10 billion for referrals.

Improving the referral program is a priority for the Indian Health Service, based on Brendan White, a spokesman for the agency. He said that this yr, about 83% of the health facilities it manages were capable of approve all eligible funding requests.

White said the agency recently How referred care Programs prioritize such requests, and there are staff shortages that may slow the method. An estimated one-third of the positions within the referred care program were unfilled in June, he said.

The Indian Health Service recently expanded some delivery areas to incorporate more people and studied whether it may possibly afford to introduce statewide voting rights within the Dakotas.

Jonni Kroll of the Little Shell Chippewa Indian Tribe in Montana doesn’t qualify for the referral care program because she lives in Deer Park, Washington state, nearly 400 miles from her tribe's headquarters.

She said linking eligibility to tribal lands was a mirrored image of old government policies geared toward keeping indigenous people in a single place, even when it meant limited access to jobs, education and health care.

Kroll, 58, said she sometimes worries in regards to the medical costs of aging and that moving to qualify for this system is unrealistic.

“We have people living all over the country,” she said. “What are we going to do? Sell our homes, leave our families and our jobs?”

People who apply for funding must face a system so complicated that the Indian Health Service created flowcharts outline the method.

Misty and Adam Heiden of Mandan, North Dakota, have experienced this primary hand. Their nearest Indian Health Service hospital not offers maternity care. Late last yr, Misty Heiden asked the referral of care program to cover the associated fee of delivering her baby at an out of doors facility.

Heiden, 40, is a member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, a tribe native to South Dakota, but lives within the delivery territory of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. Native Americans who, like her, live within the territory of one other tribe are eligible in the event that they have close ties. Although she is married to a tribal member from Standing Rock, Heiden was deemed ineligible by hospital staff.

Now the family needed to cut their food budget to pay their medical bills of over $1,000.

“It was like a slap in the face,” said Adam Heiden.

White, the Indian Health Service spokesman, said many providers offer Teaching materials to assist patients understand eligibility. But the Standing Rock Rulesshould not fully explained within the brochure.

If patients are eligible, their needs might be assessed using a medical priority list.

Connie Brushbreaker's doctor on the Indian Health Service Hospital in Rosebud, South Dakota, said she needed to see an orthopedic surgeon. But Hospital staff said the unit only cares for patients who’re at immediate risk of death.

She said that at one point, a referral program employee told her that she could manage her pain, however the pain was so severe that she needed to limit her work duties and depend on her husband to place her hair in a ponytail.

“I feel like I’m being pushed aside, like I’m not important,” Brushbreaker wrote in an appeal letter“I ask you to reconsider.”

The 55-year-old finally received funding approval and underwent surgery in July of this yr, two years after her shoulder injury and 4 months after the referral.

Patients reported that they generally had difficulty reaching referring departments attributable to staffing issues.

Patti Conica, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, required emergency care in June 2023 after contracting a serious infection. She said she applied for funding to cover the prices but has yet to receive a choice in her case despite repeated phone calls with referred care staff and in-person visits.

“I was kept waiting,” says Conica, 58, who lives in Fort Yates, North Dakota, her tribe’s headquarters.

She now has to pay greater than $1,500 in medical bills, a few of which have been turned over to a set agency.

Tyler Tordsen, a Republican state representative and member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate in South Dakota, says the referral treatment program needs more cash, but officials could also “manage their finances better.”

Some service units have large quantities of Remaining funds. However, it’s unclear how much of this money has not been spent and the way much is earmarked for approved cases which can be currently being billed.

In the meantime, more tribes manage their health care facilities – an arrangement that also uses agency funds – to try latest ways to enhance services.

Many also attempt to help patients receive outside care in other ways. These may include providing free transportation to appointments, arranging visits from specialists on reservations, or creating tribal communities. Health insurance programs.

For Brushbreaker, begging for funding felt “like selling my soul to the gods of the IHS.”

“I’m just tired of fighting the system,” she said.

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Originally published: September 9, 2024 at 1:26 p.m.

National News

Historically, when students protest at American universities and colleges – from the Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter – there was a typical claim that “external agitators” are responsible. University administrators and elected officials have often noted that community members have joined the protests to reject the demands of student protesters.

Experts say it is a convenient way for officials to delegitimize the motivations of some political movements and justify calls for law enforcement to stop direct actions which might be largely nonviolent and limited to constitutionally protected speech.

“This tactic shifts the focus away from real grievances and portrays radical movements as orchestrated by opportunistic outsiders,” said Shanelle Matthews, a professor of anthropology and interdisciplinary studies on the City University of New York and former communications director for the Movement for Black Lives.

In recent weeks, students have arrange camps, occupied buildings and led protests on campuses across the country to call out colleges and universities hand over their foundations from corporations that profit from it Israel-Hamas war. Several college and city leaders have cited the threat from outsiders when describing the protests — and a few have responded by canceling or postponing plans for commencement ceremonies.

Here's what it is best to know in regards to the term “outside agitators” used during historic student movements.

THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT (Nineteen Sixties-Seventies)

Protest movements typically consist of area people members and organizers from other parts of the state or country working together toward a typical goal. In the Nineteen Sixties, state and native officials often focused on this hallmark of community organizing, suggesting that civil rights protests were organized by people outside a specific community.

In 1960, a gaggle of black college students took out a full-page commercial in Atlanta newspapers entitled “A Call for Human Rights,” expressing solidarity with students all over the place protesting for civil rights. Segregationist politician and then-Georgia governor Ernest Vandiver suspected it was created by foreigners, calling it a calculated try and “stir up discontent, discontent, discord and evil.”

“It didn’t sound like it was prepared in any school or college in Georgia; In fact, even in this country it didn’t read the way it would have been written,” he told the press.

The concept that outside agitators were involved in civil rights protests became so widespread that Martin Luther King Jr. spoke out against the label in his 1963 letter from Birmingham Jail.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” King wrote. “Never again can we afford to live with the narrow-minded, provincial idea of ​​'outside agitators.' Anyone living within the United States can never be considered an outsider within its borders.”

Former President Richard Nixon hoped to link the 1970 shooting of Kent State students by the National Guard to outside agitators, however the FBI was unable to make such a connection. The students had protested against the Vietnam War.

During the civil rights movement, the label was used as a weapon against community members who spoke out or supported protesters and organizers, said Dylan C. Penningroth, an creator and historian who teaches law and history on the University of California, Berkeley.

“It delegitimizes internal dissent against the status quo. Anyone who speaks out against the status quo, whatever that is, is by definition an outsider,” he said.

It also ignores the incontrovertible fact that local civil rights activists often take cues from other protest movements, Penningroth said, and constructing solidarity with others across the country is commonly a crucial a part of implementing change.

BLACK LIVES MATTER (2013-present)

Nearly half a century later, the 2014 killing of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, sparked widespread protests against police brutality.

Here too, external agitators were often brought in and held answerable for the destruction, looting and burning of buildings.

The same language was used to explain protests following the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in 2020, which resulted in over 10,000 arrests nationwide.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz suggested that 80% of those that took part in the following riots in Minneapolis were from other states. However, an Associated Press evaluation found that 41 of the 52 people cited for protest-related arrests had Minnesota driver's licenses.

PRO-PALESTINIAN PROTESTS (2024)

The number of individuals arrested in reference to protests on college and university campuses against Israel's war in Gaza is now over 2,800. The Associated Press has counted no less than 70 incidents at 54 schools since protests began in Columbia on April 18.

Officials have used the rhetoric of out of doors agitators in just a few examples across the country. After dozens of scholars were arrested during demonstrations on the University of Virginia on May 4, a senior police official suggested that outsiders had “megahorns to direct protesters on how to flank our officers.”

“We are receiving information that outside agitators are beginning to engage in these protests on campus,” Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares told Fox News on May 6.

At anti-war protests on the campuses of Emory University in Atlanta, Northeastern University in Boston and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, school officials and law enforcement have made inaccurate claims in regards to the presence of non-students.

On April 30, New York law enforcement officials in riot gear entered the Columbia University campus, cleared an encampment and arrested greater than 100 people. New York Mayor Eric Adams has repeatedly cited the presence of “external agitators” to justify the usage of police force.

“There is a movement to radicalize young people, and I will not wait until it is finished and suddenly acknowledge its existence,” Adams said at a May 1 news conference.

But pressed for details, the mayor and police officials had little to say. Adams has repeatedly said that he decided police intervention was essential within the demonstrations in Colombia after learning that the husband of an “agitator” had been “arrested on federal terrorism charges.”

But the girl mentioned by the mayor was not on Columbia's campus this week, was not among the many protesters arrested and has not been charged with any crime.

Nahla Al-Arian told the Associated Press that she visited town last month and stopped by the campus to examine out the protest camp. She also said Adams misrepresented the facts about her husband, a former computer engineering professor who was indicted twenty years ago for illegally supporting the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group within the Nineteen Eighties and Nineties.

Students involved within the Columbia protests told the AP that it was true that some people unaffiliated with the university were on campus and played an energetic role within the demonstrations, but that they had vehemently denied that these allies had led or “radicalized” the scholars.

“While it is true that people with nefarious intentions break up protests, that is the exception rather than the rule,” Matthews said. “Given that, people should be wary of this narrative.”